Fashionfashion, 2002-2006 by K8 Hardy at Higher Pictures, New York

For a new exhibition at Higher Pictures, K8 Hardy has produced “Fashionfashion, 2002-2006,” a presentation of oversized zines. In creating these zines, titled Fashionfashion individually and as a series, Hardy explored visual tropes of fashion/lifestyle magazine images, recreating these kinds of highly constructed and photogenic spaces with herself as fashion model and with more casual, grittier scenes as backdrop. Hardy, having previously worked as a stylist’s assistant, is well equipped to manipulate these invented spaces, disturbing common markers of glamour, luxury, and beauty with various forms of exaggeration and ironic juxtaposition.

These zines are a precursor to Hardy’s later works, like her “Untitled Runway Show” presented at the 2012 Whitney Biennial, where the artist’s deconstructive stylistic interventions occupied a similar aesthetic and spatial arrangement to a conventional runway presentation.